The Gaza genocide is the ongoing, intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, the targeted killing of children (who account for 30% of those killed), deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites. The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee and commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, multiple human rights groups, state governments, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars, and other experts.
As of September 2026, at least 73,400 people in Gaza had been killed. The vast majority of the victims were civilians, and around 50% were women and children. Compared to other recent global conflicts, the numbers of known deaths of journalists, humanitarian and health workers, and children are among the highest. Thousands more uncounted bodies are thought to be under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A study in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that traumatic injury deaths were undercounted by June 2024, while noting an even larger potential death toll with indirect deaths included.: "We estimated 64,260 deaths (95% CI 55 298–78 525) due to traumatic injury during the study period, suggesting the Palestinian MoH under-reported mortality by 41%. ... Our findings underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation." The number of injured is greater than 174,000. Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world; the Gaza war caused more than 21,000 children to be disabled. In July 2025, 18,457 children were listed among the war dead by health authorities in Gaza, excluding indirect deaths and those buried under rubble.
An Israeli blockade heavily contributed to starvation and confirmed famine. In August 2025, about 641,000 people experienced catastrophic levels of food insecurity. Early in the conflict, Israel cut off Gaza's water and electricity. It later partially restored the water. As of May 2024, 84% of Gaza's health centres have been destroyed or damaged. Israel also destroyed numerous cultural heritage sites, including all 12 of Gaza's universities, and 80% of its schools. Over 1.9 million Palestinians—85% of Gaza's population—were forcibly displaced. Israel's bombing also caused severe environmental devastation across the territory.
In December 2023, the government of South Africa instituted proceedings, South Africa v. Israel, against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging a violation of the Genocide Convention. In January 2024, the court ordered Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of acts of genocide, to prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and to allow basic humanitarian service, aid and supplies into Gaza.Order, S. Afr., No. 192 (ICJ 26 January 2024). The court later ordered Israel to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza and to halt its Rafah offensive. Israel did not fully comply with the court's orders.
Palestinians have emphasized the relationship between the Gaza genocide and Zionist political violence, describing it as a continuation of the Nakba and its ongoing effects. Israel and its supporters maintain that its actions do not constitute genocide, that they are a response to the October 7 attacks, and that Israel's aim has been to destroy Hamas and free Israeli hostages. There is increasing consensus among genocide and international legal scholars on the genocide assessment, although some academics and countries challenge it.
Background The Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip began in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. In 2005, Israel withdrew its ground forces in the context of the Oslo Accords and the Second Intifada. The International Court of Justice subsequently issued an advisory opinion that despite the withdrawal, Israel was still illegally occupying the Gaza Strip due to its blockade of the territory.
Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has been governed by Hamas, an Islamist militant group, while the West Bank remained under the control of the Palestinian Authority. After Hamas took over, Israel intensified its blockade of the Gaza Strip, citing security concerns; international rights groups have called the blockade a form of collective punishment. UNRWA reported that, due to the blockade, 81% of Gazans were living below the poverty level in 2023, with 63% food insecure and dependent on international assistance. Since 2007, Israel and Hamas (and other Palestinian militias in Gaza) have engaged in conflict, including four wars in 2008–2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021.
On 7 October 2023 Hamas led an attack into Israel from Gaza, killing at least 1,139 people, most of them civilians. The attack included grave acts of violence, including sexual violence. During the attack, Palestinian militant groups abducted 251 people from Israel to the Gaza Strip. Israel responded with a highly destructive bombing campaign followed by an invasion of the Gaza Strip on 27 October.
Hamas officials said the attack was a response to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the blockade of Gaza, Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, and the detention of thousands of Palestinians, whom Hamas sought to release by taking Israeli hostages. Numerous commentators have identified Israeli occupation as a cause of the war. Several human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, B'Tselem,: "A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive—all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met." and Human Rights Watch, have likened the Israeli occupation to apartheid; Israel's supporters dispute this characterisation. A July 2024 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice affirmed the occupation as illegal and said it violated the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The Israeli government has said that the military actions it has undertaken are in response to the October 7 attacks and sought to destroy Hamas, overthrow its governance of the Gaza Strip, and free Israeli hostages. It has denied that its military operations constitute genocide. Multiple commentators argue that part of the motive is retaliation for the 7 October attacks.; ; : There was a completely permissive policy regarding the casualties of [bombing] operations—so permissive that in my opinion it had an element of revenge," D., an intelligence source, claimed. ... A. also used the word "revenge" to describe the atmosphere inside the army after October 7.' Nimer Sultany argues that anti-Palestinianism is also a motive.
Definitions of genocide and legal challenges
The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction". The International Court of Justice has never held a state liable for genocide. The legal threshold for genocidal intent remains a major barrier to prosecution.
Scholars have developed broader sociological and cultural definitions that are distinct from the legal definition under the Genocide Convention.: "Doctrinal opinions can be split into two categories: those who advocate for a broader understanding of the crime, as Larry May does, and those who consider, on the basis of the 1948 Genocide Convention, that genocide should be thought of exclusively in physical and biological terms while cultural genocide should rather be addressed as a human rights issue, per William A. Schabas." The public perception of what genocide means is also broader than the legal definition. As to the legal definition, there has been scholarly advocacy for expanding or adjusting it, while others seek to adhere to the original intent under the Genocide Convention.: "recent debates show that scholars still differ in their perspectives on this topic, with some advocating for a narrow interpretation of the term, limiting its use to its original intent of referring solely to the Shoah, while others are in favor of expanding and softening this concept"
The original definition coined by Raphael Lemkin was broader than that used by the Genocide Convention and included cultural and social destruction. In contrast, orthodox scholarly definitions emphasise actions targeting a group's physical survival. No minimum number of victims or intended victims is required to establish the crime, nor is complete destruction of the group. In the Rohingya genocide case, several states contended that the ICJ should "adopt a balanced approach that recognizes the special gravity of the crime of genocide, without rendering the threshold for inferring genocidal intent so difficult to meet so as to make findings of genocide near-impossible."
Genocidal intent and incitement